Positivity - a comfort quilt finished

A special quilt..

Back in December, a girlfriend from high school asked me to make her a comfort quilt. I had been thinking about it for some time as I've watched her valiant fight against adenoid cystic carcinoma. She is about the most joyful person I know and has defied every odd and diagnosis. She is truly an inspiration to me personally and I'm grateful she has chosen to document her journey via web and facebook videos.

Naturally, such an important request caused a lot of indecision. I knew the colors she wanted, but she left the design up to me. The awareness ribbon color for this particular cancer is burgundy with cream, so I started there. I had two distinct ideas for the quilt that I decided to merge together. Ok, I had like 10 ideas that had to be narrowed down. Given her always positive attitude, I thought a whole quilt of plus signs would be super cool - and they're also reminiscent of crosses. She wanted a fairly neutral palette which I found challenging so I decided to jazz up the back a bit with some color and inspirational words. Here's what I came up with:

The background is Kona natural and I used a few other Kona solids including burgundy, steel, coal and purple as well as a variety of prints including some Flea Market Fancy and Glimma.

From there I went on to the back. I used the 24" paper pieced Take Wing pattern from Lillyella. Finding just the right colors and fabrics was a real challenge! In the end, I love how it came out against the Kona ash background.

I also picked a few positive phrases to include and the back came together.

 For the quilting, I started by outlining the center butterfly and then just quilted simple straightish/wavy lines.

I like the effect from the front too.

 And now for a shot of Positivity wrapped around her beautiful owner. I'm so happy to say she likes it and the smile on her face made it all worthwhile!

FMT

New Blogger Hop & a little shopping

Hello again! I don't know how it's already the end of June! The month is slipping by and the school year is finally coming to an end. I was on a roll with getting some sewing done, but the World Cup has slowed me down a bit - have you been watching? Exciting!

Speaking of which, we had the opportunity to attend the USA/Germany soccer match a couple of weeks ago and managed to get our ugly mugs on TV. We even got a message from back home saying one of our family members had seen my son on CNN jumping around like a lunatic after our 2nd goal.

So anyway, it's Week 2 of the New Quilt Bloggers Blog Hop and my Hive has 4 new places I hope you'll visit.

Wanda of wandadotson.com (IG: wandaslifesampler)
Tish of tishnwonderland.blogspot.com (IG: tishnwonderland)
Brianna of theironandneedle.blogspot.ca (IG: theironandneedle)
Sandra of thebiasedge.wordpress.com

I've been fooling around with a new pouch idea and I have been wanting to try EQ7, so I jumped in and got it yesterday! My naughty confession of the week is that I hate reading instructions and since I'm savvy enough with the computer, I jumped in and started using it to design a PP block. The result?

hahahahahaha! What a mess! I had to hang my head in shame and start watching the instructional videos. I did have a little better success on my 2nd attempt, but I haven't watched the video on where the heck it saves your designs, so I can't see it.  Oh wait.. let me look again. 

ok here's a simple block idea

So far, I like EQ7, but some of the instructional blog posts I found were at least 4 years old, so I'm hoping it's not obsolete tomorrow! Do you have the program? What's your favorite thing about it?

FMT

Squeaking in 1 last project - Updated photos!

Hallo friends! It's LATE as usual. But I've managed to get 1 more thing finished before the Q4 FAL deadline - whew! I'm really excited not to have to "roll" this one over to next year.
In my previous (non-European) life, I had a sweet neighbor who was a tremendous help in my attempts to learn knitting. She was always available to pull out all my wrong stitches when I'd go visit her with a problem. She was quick-witted enough to not become so distracted by my small talk that she'd redo any section and tough enough not to bend to my begging for her to just "finish my stupid scarf." It is because of Mrs. B that I am 4 inches of my own knitting into a scarf that was started in 2012 and may never be finished. Gotta respect her.
I wanted to make her a bag for her own stitchy projects, and it's been on my to-do list for quite awhile. Mrs. B adores her kitties, so I decided to use the Catvent pattern from Oh, Frannson!

 My cool kid thinks she belongs in every picture taken around here.

I started with a large catvent quilted front pocket with binding, and built the bag from there. The back features a paper-pieced letter "b" and straightline quilting. The fabric is a random assortment of modern charms, Kona ash, and the handles and lining are from a line called Silent Cinema. It has closure ties and finishes about 17" tall by 15" wide. I used light batting and a very light layer of interfacing so it would have a little structure, but I think next time I'll go a little heavier with it.

 I hope Mrs. B and her kitties like it! I should totally send her my lil' scrap of a scarf and see if she can be guilted into finishing it now ;)

Fmt

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Family Room Finish

Hello!
I'm attempting my first Blogsy for iPad post. Hope it works!
I had a semi-productive weekend and got my pillows finished! I used more Kona solids from my original bundle. I worry that it's kind of monochrome/boring, but my Stash Bee quilt will liven things up when it's finished!

All 4 pillows

The Living Room

Photo Bomber Baby

Looks pretty good and I am chipping away at my Q3 list. Figuring how to link up to:

and Fabric Tuesday @ Quilt Story :)

Ciao!

FMT

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